Category Archive: pixel

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Finally returned to the Goblin Corps sprite set. Not much to show yet, beyond the original concepts, but here’s a quick animation test of the legs and upper body:

I think I’m just about satisfied with the legs, which tend to be the most difficult part for me to get looking right. Still needs some arms tacked on (looks a bit Silent Hill without them) and a lot of shading, and then on to jump, attack, and falling animations. Progress!

*Edit: Got some okay-looking arms on there now. Still needs shading work, but it’s getting there.

**Edit: Walking is looking okay, and I’ve got the jump and all three standing attacks in. Just need fourteen more frames: standing guard, jumping attacks and guard, falling, and KO (wasn’t going to do jumping attacks, but they’re trivial C&P, so why not).

**Edit: Sample spritesheet can be found here. Not ready to fully release it yet – still needs polishing and outfits, and I left in the white/gray grid – but the animations are pretty much complete. On to the outfits, and then it’s ready to release.

**Edit: Full spritesheet for the Grunt here, complete and usable (CC0 as always). Five more outfits to go.

Starting another sprite, the Goblin. I’m planning to make a naked base, then layer a few different outfits on (Grunt, Warrior, and Shaman, to start). Won’t be quite as complex as the last few – no crouch frames, probably no jumping attacks, maybe twenty frames total. Progress so far:

**Edit: Updated the image with a few more concepts for Goblin costumes. Left to right: Base, Grunt, Soldier, Knight, Assassin, Mage. Now to animate it.

What dungeon is complete without the ubiquitous Skeleton? It presents a paradox in itself, as deep within every Adventurer lurks a Skeleton, yet every novice Adventurer has a deep-seated fear of them. What Skeletons themselves fear are blunt weapons, silver, and fire – indeed, a Flaming Silver Mace would be enough to make a Skeleton loose its bowels in its trousers (if Skeletons either wore trousers or had bowels).

**Edit: Done as it’s going to get, I guess. Spritesheets are available at OGA, licensed as CC0.

Satyrs are woodland creatures with the upper body of a man and the legs, ears, and horns of a goat. They are generally playful and mischievous, though they tend to be territorial and will attack men on sight. Like any denizen of nature, they cannot abide the touch of iron, and instead fight with weapons of wood or stone. The strongest satyrs are gifted in the art of Wind Magic, and can summon other woodland creatures to help them in battle.

A bit messy, but usable for my needs. Posted it under a CC0 license on OGA. Next up, I’m going to recolor it and tack on some bat wings to make a Demon enemy.

*Edit: Wings is hard. Also none too crazy about the brown outline on gray/black body parts – might switch to a charcoal gray for the outline, or something.

Still working on it. I’ve almost got my character base done enough to start sketching out a demo. It has 47 unique frames so far, with another 3 needed; once all 50 are complete, I need to clean them up (the shading is inconsistent, to say the least), recolor them to the other base colors (dark and undead), and flesh out two additional skins (ninja and samurai), and it’ll be ready to post on OGA.

I’d like to make additional actions eventually, like running/sprinting and a few more hand-to-hand moves (uppercut, kick), but the above should be a pretty good start toward a Metroidvania-type game. Progress animation:

Yeah, it’s a bit rough and inconsistent, but it’ll be enough to get a demo together to ask for help from a real artist. Still deciding on a license, but I think it’ll be CC0, since it’s fairly low quality, I don’t stand to gain much from attribution (not going into the spriting business anytime soon), and if someone can use it I want them to do so with the least possible hurdles.

Check back soon – more to come!

*Edit: The three block frames are in – just falling and lying down, and we’re good. I do get the nagging feeling that I’m overusing the stock ‘left arm in front’ position – stare at it a while, and it seems like his arm is broken, stuck in a sling or something. Then again, meh. It’s programmer art.

*Moar edit: And that’s all the action frames. I think I’m happy enough with it to lock them in – start cleaning up what I’ve got, then add in the other outfits (ninja and samurai, and maybe one more), and call it good enough for now. The preview gif above showcases all the actions I’ve added in to date.

My big work project is nearly wrapped, so I’ve been reclaiming a few nighttime hours here and there for my hobby work. Here’s my latest practice, a couple of birds in flight for enemies in the upcoming project:

I think the falcon on the right looks better overall, but the colors are a tad too dark (on my current home setup, anyway – looks better at work). I think I need to break away from the usual 256-color palette. At this point it’s clear that I’m not going to port my engine back to the DS, so why adhere to its limitations?

I guess the same argument could be made about the resolution I work in (256×192 screen and max 64×64 sprite size on the DS makes you real stingy with the pixels), but I find low-res NES type stuff about as much as I can handle and still have it look halfway usable.

Anyway, both images will be available on OGA as usual after I’m done smoothing the rough edges – hopefully someone finds some use in them as placeholder art or something.

Turned out rather decent, for a quickie project. I’d say the biggest thing I need to work on is my palette choice – I lack subtlety, and all my art ends up very colorful. While this isn’t a terrible thing in and of itself, it wouldn’t lend itself well to darker themes.

Otherwise, I’m working on a (possibly) better way to generate smallish pixel sprites, in a Castlevania-type style. I’d like to try sketching out low-detail frames on paper, scanning and colorizing them, and then resizing and retouching as 32×64 images; I think the results would have more consistency and detail to them than doing each frame pixel-by-pixel in Gimp. It’ll be an experiment, and it might not work out, but it’s worth trying anyway.